Timberwolves point guard Ricky Rubio made a three-pointer against the last-place Utah Jazz in January. Among the 36 made baskets in a blowout victory, the 24-foot jumper from the left wing was fairly mundane, neither athletic, acrobatic nor arduous.

Yet after the second-quarter shot, fans at Target Center burst into a roar, and some of Rubio’s teammates rose from the bench, led by Kevin Love wearing a wide smile.

That’s how badly everyone wants to see Rubio make baskets. If he could score efficiently, Rubio would be “an elite point guard,” said Wolves president of basketball operations Flip Saunders. And the Wolves would be a better team.

As good as Rubio is at everything else — he is tied for the NBA lead in steals (2.5 per game) and ranks fifth in assists (8.3) — he never has been able to shoot, compiling a 36 percent success rate in three NBA seasons.

“Ricky is not shooting the ball really well,” Saunders said. “But just because it doesn’t go in doesn’t mean you can’t shoot.”

Saunders pointed out that Rubio, 23, has played only two seasons worth of NBA games because of a knee injury suffered in March of his rookie year. And Saunders further noted that Rubio can finish a drive. He also is shooting 34 percent from three-point range, just outside the league’s top third, and his 83 percent free-throw rate is among the top 100 players.

Two advanced statistics attempt to show the overall value of a shooter. True shooting percentage is a formula that accounts for efficiency with all shots, while effective field-goal percentage measures the increased value of three-pointers.

Both stats show the same bottom line, however. Rubio is in the bottom third among players in both categories.

“What the analytical people can’t judge is somebody’s heart and how much somebody works,” Saunders said. “It’s a transformation with these guys, and you do have to have some patience.”

During the all-star break, Rubio said he traveled to the Los Angeles area to work with a shooting coach. After Wolves practices and shootarounds, he often stays late, hoisting shot after shot. Saunders also said Rubio has called him up late at night to come to the gym and watch him shoot.

BREAKING OLD HABITS

As an 18-year-old, freewheeling maestro from Barcelona, Spain, Rubio was selected fifth overall by the Wolves in the 2009 draft. That summer, he and his Spanish national team played an exhibition game against Great Britain and point guard Flinder Boyd.

“He’s literally a genius,” Boyd, who played at Dartmouth before a 10-year European career, said in a recent phone interview with the Pioneer Press.

Boyd, now a basketball writer and commentator, described guarding Rubio as “trying to catch an antelope with a butterfly net” in his article “The Ricky Rubio Experience” for The Classical in 2012.

Boyd believes Rubio’s ability to see beyond X’s and O’s give him a unique perspective of the court.

“He sees these shapes the way other people can’t see,” Boyd said.

But Rubio’s national coach often bottled him up, Boyd said. A month later, in the European Championships in Poland, Boyd wrote, “It was clear the walls were closing in on Ricky. He was overthinking. When he got the ball, I almost stopped guarding him … daring him to shoot.”

A more rigid, half-court structure continued with his new pro club team in Barcelona from 2009-11, Boyd said.

“You have to understand this,” Saunders said. “He was a young player. He was a facilitator. He was never asked to shoot. If he shot, it had no impact on whether the team won or not. We are asking him to do different things.”

TIME TO FORGET

Mentally, Saunders compared Rubio to the greatest player in Timberwolves history — Kevin Garnett.

“I used the same saying with Garnett, ‘Your greatest strength is your greatest weakness — if you can’t contain it,’ ” Saunders said. “Ricky’s greatest strength is he’s a great competitor and he’s a perfectionist. When he’s not perfect, he gets down on himself: ‘Why am I not perfect?’ ”

Before the Wolves played host to the Memphis Grizzlies in late January, Rubio ran into Shawn Respert in the bowels of Target Center. Respert, the Wolves’ player development coach the previous two seasons, hugged Rubio and asked how he was doing. Respert then inquired about his shooting and pointed to his head.

“You have to fail quickly,” Saunders said. “You make a mistake, you forget about it and you move on. Those are things that you continue to work with him on.”

IT’S ALL ABOUT FORM

Tim Legler, an ESPN analyst and 10-year NBA veteran, said Rubio’s shooting form has “regressed” this season.

“Over the course of last year, he started to improve a little bit as far as his mechanics,” Legler said. “This year, it almost looks like he is almost shooting a dart. He’s aiming the ball.”

Legler said a solid shooter must first spring up and then out toward the basket.

“That is why he has no trajectory on his shot,” Legler said. “It’s completely flat because a basketball never gets moving in an upward direction before he releases it.”

Saunders said Rubio’s form is at times inconsistent and unbalanced, but not broken.

“When he’s not balanced, it throws his shoulders off sometimes and his shot tends to flatten out some,” Saunders said. “I think it’s one of those things that he has to continually work on and get in a situation where he gets a comfort level where he is shooting the ball at the same game speed in practice that he is in games.”

Rubio practiced shots Tuesday in the Wolves’ first practice back from the all-star break. He shot from all around the court, trying to build on his 57 shots (40 percent shooting) in the past five games.

“It has to be more consistent,” he said. “I feel better lately, and I’m going to be more aggressive.”

SHOOT-FIRST MINDSET

Los Angeles Lakers point guard Steve Nash defended Rubio in the first quarter at Target Center in early February. Like Boyd before him, Nash seemed to be daring Rubio to shoot.

Instead, Rubio attempted to drive past Nash. The ball was slapped out of bounds, and the Wolves maintained possession. As Rubio stood on the baseline, Wolves coach Rick Adelman beckoned for Rubio’s attention. When he had it, the coach mimicked a shooting motion.

Rubio finished with 13 assists but hit only 1 of 4 shots from the field.

A shoot-first mentality is something Adelman has been trying to instill in Rubio, especially on the pick-and-roll.

“Once he clears that pick, he has got to get a rhythm going on his shot,” Adelman said. “Sometimes he comes off and it’s the last thing he thinks about.”

Adelman said it’s also advantageous for Rubio to shoot early in games.

“They go underneath (the pick), and you got a good look at a shot, go ahead and take that shot,” Adelman said. “That’s a good time to take it because you are setting the stage for the whole game.”

Without Love, Kevin Martin and Nikola Pekovic against the Portland Trail Blazers in early February, the Wolves needed Rubio to score. He tallied 11 of his career-high 25 points in the first quarter, hitting three midrange jumpers of 15, 18 and 20 feet.

“When you make one, the next one is easier to take,” Rubio said. “It shouldn’t be like that, but that is the way it is. When the shots are falling down, you see the rim bigger. When they are not, the rim gets tighter and tighter.”

To be successful, Legler said, a shooter must want to shoot.

“You can’t shoot a basketball if it’s an afterthought,” he said. “It has to be something that you are anticipating.”

IMPROVEMENT POSSIBLE

“The one thing that I have noticed in this league is that players can become better shooters,” Saunders said. “You can’t teach players a lot of times how to get steals, how to lead, how to pass. The things that Ricky does have, those are (not teachable).”

Saunders said John Wall, his former point guard with the Washington Wizards, was in some ways a worse shooter than Rubio. Wall decelerated on his shot, Saunders said. He made just three three-pointers in 66 games during his second season.

“We knew he had struggles when he would go out and shoot 1 of 10, 1 for 11, but we knew he was going to work at it,” Saunders said. “We kept talking to him about keeping his confidence and that it would get there.”

Last Sunday, Wall played in his first All-Star Game. He’s scoring 19.8 points per game and is shooting 42 percent from the field, 32 percent from three-point range and 84 percent from the line.

“That is going to be the same thing with Ricky,” Saunders said. “(If) he becomes a pretty good shooter, he is going to become an elite point guard because of the other stuff he does.”

Legler said part shooting is innate, but not all of it.

“There is no question in my mind that he can (improve),” Legler said. “There is a school of thought that shooters are born, not made. I’m not one of those people.”

Andy Greder covers two varieties of football — Minnesota Gophers and Minnesota United, aka the club embarking into Major League Soccer this year. Since joining the Pioneer Press full time in November 2013, he’s also covered the Timberwolves as a beat and spot duty from the Vikings to high schools. He was a part-time breaking news reporter at the Pioneer Press from 2011-13, when he was also a freelance writer and organic farmer. He started at the Duluth News Tribune in 2006, covering sports, news and business until living abroad in 2010.

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